Thursday, May 13, 2010
What AREN'T I Reading?
Librarians have been looking askance at me from the time I was nine years old. To be fair, I imagine it must have been somewhat disconcerting to see a stack of Stephen King novels in the arms of this lisping moppet who could barely see over the front desk. Since then, I've always wondered if librarians form secret preconceptions about patrons' characters from the books they check out. My favorite assistant at the local library told me as much once. "Yeah," he said, "I'm judging you right now." I enjoyed watching the expression on his face as he scanned my armload of knitting patterns and treatises on the occult. "What is wrong with you?" he asked me.
What is wrong with me is, in this case, that I have eclectic and eccentric taste in literature. An average trip to the library usually results in my bringing home a mixed bag of subjects: politics, linguistics, neuroscience, poetry, psychology, religious studies, crafting, comic books, science fiction, sex, a documentary film or two, and at least one cookbook. Frequently I have hauled home one of all of these. I rarely make it through all of them in the allotted time, and I could practically finance a new wing of the building with all the fines I pay. So yesterday I attempted to cut down. I intended to pick out a movie and spend the evening vegging out. No new books. Well, maybe one cookbook.
Forty-five minutes later I walked out with the following:
- Two cookbooks (The Joy of Cooking and a collection of sensually evocative recipes unfortunately named Booty Food)
- An exploration of poetic syntax
- Two collections of neurological case studies by the incomparable Oliver Sacks
- A copy of Wuthering Heights
- An Agatha Christie mystery
- A three-part Nova miniseries on string theory
- A documentary about the state of the planet narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio
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